About

I am currently Assistant Professor of English and Humanities at SUNY Canton where I teach courses in contemporary American literature, digital media writing, and narrative and mobile games. I received my PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2015, and my M.A. in literature from Hebrew University of Jerusalem. My research examines rhetorical infrastructures across emerging media genres such as graphic narratives, hybrid storyscapes, and digital games in order to investigate the ways that media forms are shifting cultural attachments to contested territory in the U.S. and Israel-Palestine.

My recent article, “Security Games: The Coded Logics of the Playable War on ISIS” (Studies on Critical Security 5.2) argues that the coded logics of digital war games mimic cultural structures that make up contemporary understandings of security in the current war on ISIS. My essay in Studies in Comics (6.2) titled “Contested Spaces in Graphic Narratives” argues that devices within the graphic form allow for a complex visual understanding of affective attachment to the state through possibilities of graphic, bordered texts that cut across traditional understandings of territoriality and occupation. An overview of my work in the University of Wisconsin DesignLab and of my interest in literary media design is available on the UW-Madison Writing Center Blog. A video showing my early work teaching game design in ARIS (Augmented Reality Interactive Storytelling) with the Games and Learning Society (GLS) articulates the importance of game design for reflecting on ways that we produce knowledge. My teaching experience is further demonstrated in a video of a guest lecture on graphic narrative that I gave at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

My teaching focuses on critical making practices that incorporate the intersection of space and theory to combine seminar, studio, and lab practices to enable conceptual, aesthetic, and technical learning with potentially any content or subject matter (Jon McKenzie). In collaborative design teams, students create a suite of deliverables that include a team website, a game or museum installation, an illustrated proposal, a video demo of their game, and a formal presentation. For example, students in English 550: Studies in Criticism create theory-based games we call ARIT: Augmented Reality Interactive Theory. One group developed a team and game inspired by Postcolonial theory, another was informed by Feminist theory. In English 571: Remix Mash-Up, and Digital Design, teams build installations and games inspired by hacktivist groups such as the Guerilla Girls, the YES Men, Critical Art Ensemble, and Electronic Disturbance Theatre. One group, Rootbound created a game inspired by Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir, while Iceberg’s work was influenced by the actions of the YES Men.